lot. well i'm tom arbor in washington d.c. here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture heads continue to roll as the hacking scandal surrounding rupert murdoch's empire picks up steam on a murdoch's international chief executive has been arrested and britain's top cop turned it is bad yesterday after being linked to the scandal so will this media scandal trickle over to his u.s. media outlet box so-called news plus we're two weeks away from the country's financial foundation collapsing and republicans still aren't budging on their

budget debates so just how hard must times yet before they put the country in their best interest instead of the two thousand and twelve election chances and inmates across the nation are taking of no food to protest inhumane prison conditions so what are the thousands of cellmates demanding and will american lives. you need to know this some other bad week for rupert murdoch yesterday that rebecca brooks the former chief executive of news international the parent company of murdoch's british media empire was arrested on charges that she illegally intercept phone calls and bribes u.k. police officers and that's not all also taken in from the scandal yesterday britain's top cops are paul stephenson the head of the metropolitan police service resigned site saying i'm going speculation accusations relating to the police's

link with news international on the case now is the u.k. serious fraud office agency in charge of investigating a large fraud cases they opened up a probe into news international yesterday to look into whether or not murdoch's corporation grossly miss. use shareholders' money and as murdoch's media empire in the u.k. crumbles there are new allegations in america that fox news is also acting into illinois into phones illegally or at least phone records as the daily koz is reporting a former fox news executive dan cooper has come forward saying that fox news chief roger ailes instructed an underground bunker within the fox news building in new york city headquarters to perform out of her intelligence that may include illegally hacking phone calls the bunker was known as the brain room so all of these new developments coming out of the u.k. and this new allegation that fox news is home to a james bond villain style secret base underground mean for rupert murdoch's media

empire and for that matter is job they've sold anna joins me now to talk about this story he's the communications director of free press that net well civil rights attorney and media adviser dave welcome to her legs. if murdoch goes in for that matter roger ailes the old want to be a case of meet the new boss same as the old boss well we've been looking for a very long time to rupert planning his own departure he's eighty years old no he's been grooming is son to take over the reins son james the heir apparent if rupert goes there's every indication that james will also go east seems to be very deeply implicated in this if the news reports are to be believed but they're making money selling salacious things they're making money with fox news the united states running it is g.o.p. t.v. basically if they're making money doing that when the new boys come in and just say keep doing the same things like cut out the illegal part. i would hope so at least

they're cutting out the illegal part it seems to me that. as our friend john nichols wrote in the nation that rupert murdoch's and news corp's primary ideology is profit what's good for rupert murdoch so whoever comes along board as the next chief of news corp is likely to be doing the same thing i wouldn't imagine any serious change in path. if there's any credibility to this story that this allegation of dan cooper's. they apparently hacked at least his telephone records to find out that he'd been talking with david brock. this is starting to get creepy i mean is this james bond intelligence for him i mean what's the deal here with fox and what will it mean if it's true if it's true that would be a very significant significant factor in whether the you have c.c. would would renew those licenses you know there's there's a standard in getting an f.c.c.

license that you have to be of good character the license holder has to be of good character now you know there has been a lot of push from some organizations who are ideologically opposed to fox news on principle to say let's get those license let's take those licenses you know there are twenty eight stations and twenty eight locations and each one of them is subject to to a challenge at some point. and they're saying let's get this investigation let's get convictions well actually you don't need convictions it's just a matter of good character and if the organization is in fact investigating people outside the law using extra legal means to look at their records look at their phones look at their e-mails that sort of thing if that's true i think that would be a very very tough thing for the f.c.c. to rubberstamp it's very interesting although fox news being on cable systems doesn't require if they see a protest that's correct so this is just the first television station rush is. probably a much larger profit center than fox news. i watch television and that's that's

a big deal i wouldn't know the answer to that but i wouldn't be surprised if they own some some television stations and all of the major markets here in d.c. l.a. new york the only couple the one of the original whistleblowers about news of the world back from several years ago sean or today was found dead apparently of suicide he apparently he's the guy who made the allegations about david cameron's press secretary being when he worked at news of the world one of the guys who was hacking phones and so now he's been vindicated he would have a book deal he would have a speaking tour ahead of him why would you commit suicide. you know i honestly wouldn't know and i wouldn't want to speculate on that i mean clearly you know suicide is a very tragic event and the man is reportedly had a drinking and drug drug problems. so it could just be a coincidence could be a coincidence and

a terrible shame frankly because these you know he if he if he he did in fact as he said come forward because he wanted to clean up journalism well you know as a former journalist myself i can say we could use more will still blowers like that right there's there's no sort of democratic underground one of the top threads that is speculating that tony blair suddenly kind of turned right politically about the time that murdoch was starting to act on phone calls and that a number of us politicians are just you know live in total fear of fox news and you know speculating that may be people are even being blackmailed is there any. you know any allegations like this even being made i realize we're out on very thin ice here yeah you know what i don't think it needs to get into that sort of nefarious feeling because what they do what they do on the surface is is clearly enough you know. our position at free press is that is that this is a symptom of the disease is media consolidation and that the power that has been

consolidated in the hands of just a few companies news corp being one of them a t.n.t. being another comcast being yet another is is where the danger is fortunately in the u.k. to have a very vibrant very competitive media system where competing newspaper like the guardian can can bird dog this story for years when it was initially dismissed as just a rogue reporter and a rogue private investigator the guardian followed this story for many years until now it's become this thing that could feasibly topple the news corp empire what we're lacking in the united states is that very competitive very tooth and nail kind of real in the. french's it was eighty seven reagan in eighty two reagan stopped forcing the sherman act in the ninety six clinton sunday telegraph sure i mean we're live i've got to read it a certain thanks so much for being with a side of you here i do appreciate if what this former fox executive is saying about the brain room is true and if the obama administration will actually

investigate and prosecute murdoch again maybe up at fox so-called news and our nation could be a lot better in its absence but in the u.k. it's really interesting the path the prime minister to being prime minister is through rupert murdoch here's some examples that margaret thatcher he actually actually added she allowed him to add the times of the times of london the sunday times to his portfolio of properties and she was richly rewarded for that in his papers john major her successor in fact the day of the election he ran a headline that said words the effect of if if can i think it was the his opponent if he wins will the last person leaving england turn the lights out and it was a real a real effort tony blair flew to australia to get on bended need to ask to ask murdoch for his endorsement and murdoch flipped over to labor to the equivalent of the democratic party in this case it's about profit empowered not about politics for murdoch gordon brown the next prime minister attended rebecca brooks as wedding

protege david cameron the current prime minister supported was supported murdoch and vice a versa and even hired andy cole some one of its editors the guy who was running news of the world when they were hacking phones as press secretary brits are waking up to the fact that murdoch has been manipulating their politics but americans the path through the republican nomination to the reality is through fox news if you don't get on fox news if you're ignored by fox news you're republican you never going to you know there's nowhere to go but you get a softball treatment on their shows it's the only network in fact most republican candidates will even go out if murdoch doesn't support you here's your doomed. but back in one nine hundred seventy roger ailes proposed g.o.p. t.v. nixon here's the roger ailes secret nixon era blueprint for fox news last month cook john cook found us in the nixon library the papers that laid this out ailes handwritten notes on the memo titled a plan for putting the g.o.p. on t.v.

news and now fox news controls the g.o.p. britons are waking up to how the fox empire has been controlling their politics when are americans going to wake up. and. it's time for our daily poll your chance to tell us what you think here's today's question is the game up at fox so called news and choices are yes former fox news executive dan cooper is saying roger ailes at an underground bunker and may have illegally hacked phone calls or know who cares if i actually use illegally x. phone calls log on the target dot com let us know what you think will be open until tomorrow morning. coming up a government giveaway in texas goes horribly wrong they've been several people injured could this be just

a glimpse of the chaos to come of republican seed succeed in cutting federal assistance to millions of baby americans. twenty four seven live streaming news towns writing to you about the ongoing financial hurricane unlimited free high quality videos for download. and stories you never find on mainstream news. so the political. posts in more aren't just.

on friday president obama gave the a good eight thirty six hour deadline to republicans to agree to a new debt limit deal now that deadline along with all the other previous deadlines is in the trash can with two weeks to go until our economy implodes there's still no debt limit deal and americans are getting worried a new pew washington post survey shows that seventy five percent of americans are concerned that not raising the debt limit could hurt the nation's economy and you quote it when a quinnipiac right quinnipiac poll shows two thirds of americans agree that a responsible debt limit plan includes both spending cuts and tax hikes on millionaires and billionaires similar to what the president. proposal still or republicans won't budge but they might if we see more signs of social unrest like we saw last week in dallas texas it was there the point of it was there were five

thousand people stampeded a building that was offering one hundred government housing assistance vouchers developers will help pay for portions of rent based on an individual's income at least eight people were injured in a desperate dash for federal assistance and many of those who say they were trampled say they feel that they're lucky just to be alive crowd is mostly made up of single mothers and their children senior citizens who rely social soley on social security and minimum wage earners who just can't get boy on their meager paychecks and it's exactly this type of federal assistance that republicans are demanding to be cut so as our nation falls deeper and deeper into desperation with an economic catastrophe right around the corner what will it take for republicans to agree with debt limit deal it off or take on the issue is kerry lucas energy director at the independent women's forum kerry welcome back and thanks so much for having me on tom thanks for being here why are republicans manufacturing this debt limit crisis this isn't a manufactured crisis and while you it's interesting to see the polls of people who

are concerned about it's the at that moment situation that people are just as concerned about runaway government spending and the debt itself when a family is buried under a credit card that the answer isn't always just to keep raising the maximum and trying to increase the amount you can borrow sometimes you've got to take a hard look at the budget and start making some cuts and i think this is a moment when the american people can look back and say hey it's time for us to get serious about budget and care if this was a real crisis if there was a debt load if there was a debt crisis we would be paying more interest for people to buy our bonds right now all over the world who want to buy our bonds and we're paying two percent interest well there is no crisis time to what it will there is if there is a crisis it was very very serious the republicans who have shares of the government that's the crisis now it's time we were in the process of the on standard tours and every other major debt rating agency is. that the united states that made it through the show you know we don't know the story about is know that this was not a go this was months ago when they started looking warning about the jet the g.d.p.

ratio approaching ninety percent and that's considered a magic number and has a has a debt to g.d.p. ratio of two hundred twenty nine percent aaa rated bonds well tom this is i mean this is across the news every day but we're also how much how high do you want to touch that to go tom should we just keep going i just don't think that so you should right now what i want to jobs. why is it taking away benefits from drilling oil as a tax increase and taking away benefits for drilling children's cavities a spending you know rise of the benefits for aging airplanes as a tax cut taking away benefits for aging grandparents and spending why is that the taking away benefits for hedge funds as a tax increase and taking away benefits for social security medicare is a spending bill why is it that liberals never want to talk about things like trimming benefits for rich people on social security they consider that it got to sell and has to turn it into a welfare program it is not talk about that it's an insurance program i see part of a name so if i see a video link it's really we should be having bill gates on medicare and all these social security and they did this but this is in fact i wanted to pay more into the

term this is you know we can't you know bill gates might go bankrupt you know your google guy come along and then right followed by first time i think this is the this is a perspective that government can never be too big and we can always take more from the private sector if you think about the you just said you're worried more about jobs when you talk about things like the stampede going on in texas over federal housing vouchers that's not that's not a sign that oh it's great we should have more of these out there is not a society absolutely and do you think that raising taxes is going to is going to be a job during the eisenhower administration without pressure it was ninety one percent we had a lot of jobs during the kennedy administration was ninety one percent in a lot of jobs during the johnson administration was seventy four percent president nixon said this was written by me and a lot of jobs and then all of a sudden reagan came along and the jobs going to all going offshore well it was not it was five years ago we had army. employment under five percent so we've had most of those jobs would you want fries with that i mean our good many factory jobs are gone they're gone because of thirty years of insane president

a president obama himself said that it would be crazy to raise taxes during a recession he said that on just a few months i disagree with him well if you know i think this is at some point we've got to start talking about how it is we're going to create private sector jobs and the answer isn't to start squeezing companies and small businesses more and unfortunately you know the top the only thing top three of you suggest in the taxes should be raised on small businesses sure they are raised that if you raise the individual income tax that's not all you're talking about this is people who are taxes by by saying this is personal income corporate him i mean you know you're going to believe this what they will do kerry is the same thing that i did in one thousand nine hundred four i owned a corporation in one thousand and four and we flipped it from a from a from an escort to a secret but ok there's an undersea course and there are there are guys like you who can take advantage of us i was right near the time i was an expert or who had started a business there are a lot of people who are struggling small businesses who are struggling struggling who have ten employees and this is how they said to me but the fact of the matter

is that when when reagan changed the change the tax law we spent three hundred seventy five dollars to change the type of corporation we had that's all it takes ok what time this is if you want to bring a bit of this maybe you can still tax rich people would stop going to hurt small businesses i will just clip from l.l. season that's corp's to see not everyone is paying for a great lawyers and knows how to know where i did it myself oh you're a smart guy tom i think that a lot of people out there are legals you likely hear from the people so i feel like they have got to go but i'm getting around our around tax laws we all know the tax laws and the treasury secretary can't comply with with taxes and managed to manages to get himself in trouble there are a lot of small business owners out there who do feel pinched and worry about taxes going higher than people worried about taxes green or the cold. it's the billionaires in america it's the billionaires on wall street that's ridiculous that's absolutely it's absurd to think that the billionaires i'll. always find a way to get to get out of paying taxes the way they found out i was areas he is got somewhere else they can and he's have their houses wired is why having no

capital gains tax the maximum of fifteen percent that's just wrong in my opinion any out we're we're we're out ok thanks for dropping thank you always good to hear thank shop just a few days after threaten to downgrade our aaa debt rating over the ongoing debt limit debate fiasco moody's credit rating agency offered up some advice to the united states to avoid this sort of problem in the future get rid of the debt ceiling altogether arguing that the united states is one of only a few nations in the world that actually has a limit on debt which can cause periodic on certainly moody's words when congress drags its feet on raising that limit moody's encourage lawmakers to put an end to the uncertainty and look for other ways to reduce debt aside from a debt ceiling throughout history the debt limit has been raised more than one hundred times meaning it's completely ineffective it actually reducing debt and now the republicans have found a way to exploit it to carry on their radical anti-political as agenda it's time to scrap it altogether not only that this whole get limit mess is distracting americans from the real problem not our debt but instead our shot heard the job

market it's the jobs stupid i mean that's that's the real issue we have nine point two percent unemployment right now which is substantial and we need to be doing something about the real unemployment rate is actually around sixteen point two percent last month the economy only added eighteen thousand jobs and fourteen million people are unemployed and here's an interesting thing the states that cut spending we have twenty five states that increase spending twenty four states that cut spending since president obama came into office so here we have our own laboratory in the united states and what we found is that those states that increased spending one point two percent increase in private employment a half a percent increase in economic growth those states that cut spending had a two point one percent decrease in private employment. and a two point nine percent economic contraction really simple cut government spending the economy gets worse increase government spending because the economy gets better

f.d.r. said it well he said the best welfare program is a good job and that the government should be the employer of last resort if there are jobs out there then we'll hire you to do something and there's certainly a lot of things that need to be done bridges and roads and i mean all of the infrastructure teachers build our schools all these other kind of things similar the best deficit reduction plan is one that creates jobs so which by the way raises tax revenues it increases because you have more people working you know and. don't cut money from the real job creators in america the real job creator in america the people with money in their pocket they go to the store and buy things and when they buy things that purchase then echoes out into the rest of the rest of the economy and and grows it it's really really very very straightforward during a time of recession we need to increase government spending to get more money into people's pockets so that the economy will get jumpstart and you do it.

the nationwide hunger strike is continuing in thirteen prisons across america has more than seven hundred prisoners are nearing starvation to protest inhumane conditions the hunger strike that started at pelican bay state prison and then spread to other prisons across the nation is now its third week and family members are reporting that many prisoners are nearing death and refusing medical attention as one prisoner argued no one wants to die you know under the current system of what amounts to intense torture what choice do we have so what does of the prisoners are good nanny and how can we avoid seen thousands of people die as a result of starvation here to shed some more light on this issue is laura magnini . of the american friends service committee she's a mediator with the pelican bay prison hunger strike and co-author of the book beyond prisons a new interface paradigm for field prison system laura welcome and my apologies if i mispronounced your last name. said my how do you say it. i'm yawning thank you

very much but kind of abuses of the prisoners striking against. oh this is a really serious problem that they're facing very long term isolation i think most people don't know that we even did that since country but there are thousands of christians who are currently in their time inside prisons in criminal law and situations so much very confined situation sensory deprivation situation and their fear for years that it's time some people have been near islamist for years mostly here or there because somebody seduced them to be gang related a gang related that's not necessarily confined to gang activity and trying to association some kind of content. so it's a very nice it spread problem and in prisoners don't have very many options of trying to hunt and. one of the prisoners demands. they have five basic demands the first has to do with ending were punished. and i think we all

understand. well and so forth ourselves that i'm ashamed everybody for something minor to me it is unfair and so they're asking that that i'm told out based on individual accountability in some fairly good ones pay the price for that instead of saying tick in a third person things a lot founder and he says a spiral binding yourself back then and then all of a sudden there are no wild rough couple reasons that's the kind of thing that they are talking about in their track record and if so they're asking for you know that to be corrected i don't think it does us any good to have we're punishments when in fact we're trying to teach people and so that's the first one the second has to do with with changing this is respect invalidation and what were qualified somebody to be inactive for activity can be a slow process now you really think where the only way you can get out of the security council is by basically snitching on somebody else supposedly giving

information we all know but information that's that's hard from torture is not reliable information but it's not only work with people that it's you know so they want to change in the process so that people have a way to step down from the incidents without having supposedly you know give information about somebody else and the whole game validation process we won't get much more serious. the third one has to do with the u.s. commission's two thousand and six recommendations about solitary i'm an elephant easily out of compliance is recommendations and they and then you have various recommendations in there but the first and most important it's really about solitary confinement should be a last resort not a first resort when it's somebody might be really so compliance with that commission it's huge the last two are much more civil and i say ordinary in my own vein but nina lots of people whose lives are so narrow as they are instances where

these but for. one has to do with fruit that it might be consumed if that much it's plain old that there be nothing and then again a traditional in the fifth line is kind of a series of different small things like the one relating to the law calendars or access to a sewer midcap in cold weather the fact that you shouldn't have to go to the nurse's office in your boxer shorts and various nursing areas should be. jersey shorts issue the fact that you should have access to the library books there is a library there are books in it but i'll second that that was considered a privilege and it was in a way so there's a list of hope and risk under five of things that they're asking for that are quite minor that are very rampant not a simple but it isn't as art and still not chosen to very much laura in in just a half a minute or so what can people who are watching right now do to help to show solidarity. time around with me writing letters to

you. since you are not unreasonable demands and really we don't live in a society tortures are good people in these times so with these indefinite it's not necessary and we can do better. laura thanks so much for being with us tonight. this hunger strike is one result of the for profit prison industry that has lobbied for years for stricter laws and longer sentences because every new american is locked up means more profits for these private prison corporations trying to put an end to the private prison industry and nixon's war on drugs and redirect those billions into education and anti-poverty programs. herman cain once again puts his judge metal foot in his mouth details of the gun traversal ban proposal.

drives the world of fear mongering used by politicians who makes decisions complete didn't break through through it if it made who can you trust no one who is in view with a global missionary see where we had it state controlled capitalism is called sackfuls when nobody dares to ask we do our t. question more.